Railway Yardsman

The Yardsman spends his working day in a railway yard, for example a goods yard, where wagons arrive from stations and yards all over the railway system, and must be rearranged into trains to get them to their final destinations. In some cases, wagons may also be loaded and unloaded in the yard.

From the coaches or wagons which fill up the sidings each outgoing train must be made up. In the case of the passenger express this is a comparatively simple matter. The coaches that have come in the night before are re-arranged in a reverse order, are swept and dusted and washed, and ready for use again. But the putting together of a freight or mixed train is often a labour of great perplexity. The wagons which are intended to form such a train are often scattered widely over the yard, one on the warehouse track, another on the timber side track, a third on the coal side track, a fourth among the defective cars in the repair shop. These it is the business of the yardsman to collect and organize into a train. For this purpose there is placed under his orders a small shunting engine, with its driver and fireman. From morning to night this yardsman is on the move. He must know every inch of his depot yard, the beginning and end of every side track, the peculiarities of every switch, the time of the arrival and departure of every train, the location of every wagon or coach. He must know how to get them in place with the least possible waste of time and energy, how to utilise every moment, when he may safely cross this track, when run along that. All day he is dodging in and out among tracks crowded with wagons, and often with passing trains, with nothing to guide him but his own judgment, making his own time-table from minute to minute, sometimes under exigencies such that a delay of a minute results in a delay of hours. Next to the driver and fireman, there is perhaps no position of greater hazard or greater responsibility than that of the yardsman.